My Creative Mojo

Hi.  The name’s Allen…  Doug Allen.  

I hope I don’t come across as conceited or perhaps as a total ass for introducing myself in James Bond fashion, but I believe in style… and class… although many might argue that I’m much lower on the classiness food chain than 007.

Enough about me, here’s the scoop for this blog: 

My Creative Mojo is about the creative process. How it works. How to relight the creative fire when it short circuits. Avoiding blocks. And most of all, how to continuously stoke the creative fire.A few years ago I was working on a music video shoot. We were outdoors in San Juan Capistrano. Between takes, the crew was moving the cameras and all the other gear to a new section of the estate and the band had to wait. They were sitting on benches and tree stumps playing their instruments. The sound man from the crew named a song and the band played it. He named another song, then another, each time the band changed tunes together without missing a beat. Then one of the bandmembers started calling out keys, as they continued to play the same song, all changing keys at the same time. That’s when I realized that these were “real” musicians. If they weren’t being paid to play, they’d be at home or on someones porch or in the yard, playing music, because that’s what they love to do. All kinds of creativity are like this. Painters… writers… sculptors… actors… photographers… the real ones do it because they love it, and they’d have it no other way.

From time to time, someone will ask me “How do you come up with ideas for a joke/story/sketch?”

I’m never sure how to answer this question. It comes from within just like a musician comes up with song lyrics or a guitar riff. It’s what I’ve chosen to call 

My Creative Mojo.

As long as I continue to fuel the fire, I never seem to run out of ideas and My Creative Mojo runs at full throttle.